If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

This guy was the author of one of my favorite quotes. In reference to knowing what movies will work and/or make money, he said this: “Nobody knows anything.” You can actually expand that into all sorts of different areas. Nobody knows anything. For whatever reason, I find that comforting. And, of course, he was a great screenwriter.

I don't know if I'm in the mood for all the hot takes on this. McCain was really tough to watch because there was insanity from both sides. I'm a little extra peeved at GHWB because I just found out recently he tried to shut the Nixon investigation down. That and the gropey thing he did the last couple years AT LEAST. I did like how he became so close to Bill Clinton though. Like it says a lot that they could get past their animosity and try to better the world. He wasn't a hero or a devil, but in the middle and where in the middle depends. And all the hot takes are going to be arguing for angel or devil instead of shades of gray. It might be so dark gray it's almost black, but it's still gray.

I realized I should explain the Bush-Nixon thing since I can't be the only person who didn't know and some of the proof has just recently surfaced (as in the prosecutors heard the tapes for the first time while this podcast was created). George Beall was a US Attorney on the Nixon investigation whose brother Glenn was a sitting US Senator at the same time. His brother was pressured and in turn his brother pressured him, among others.

In other words, what U.S. Attorney George Beall needs to do is sit in on these “fanatical prosecutors” in his office who are taking this investigation to places we don’t want it to go.

Nixon and Haig are devising this plan, in secret, to interfere with this ongoing investigation. They then start putting this plan into action.

But the middle man they end up using-- the guy who they drag into this obstruction scheme-- ultimately isn’t Mel Laird. Who they end up using for this obstruction effort is the Chairman of the Republican National Committee at the time. A man by the name of... George Herbert Walker Bush.

The future President of the United States-- George Bush-- gets enlisted in this effort to reach out to Senator Glenn Beall to have him pressure his brother to shutdown this investigation.

Listen to this phone call between Richard Nixon and Al Haig.

The audio here is a little bit distorted, but the first voice here is Nixon and he’s talking to Haig about enemies of the White House who are now going after everybody:

NIXON: It’s amazing, isn’t it? By golly, the way they start to go after everybody, don’t they?

HAIG: Yeah, they’re after everybody. And the Vice President has been very nervous, he called me three times here.

NIXON: I know and you decided to have Harlow try to, well he’s isn’t here—
HAIG: He isn’t here, so I did it through George Bush on the first run.

NIXON: That’s good, that’s good.“I did it through George Bush on the first run.”

This didn’t ever stick to George HW Bush... maybe because these audio tapes have just been collecting dust for the last four decades. But George Bush was brought in to a potentially criminal effort organized and directed by the then-President of the United States Richard Nixon to obstruct an ongoing investigation into his Vice President.

And George Bush did it.

U.S. Attorney George Beall ended up donating his papers to Frostburg State University in Maryland. And if you go to those archives, you can now see an official “memo-to-file” that U.S. Attorney George Beall wrote that Summer of 1973. In that memo to file, it is made quite clear that after the White House came up with this plan, George H.W. Bush did, in fact, contact U.S. Senator Glenn Beall and he tried to have Senator Glenn Beall get word to his little brother the U.S. Attorney about this investigation.

This is what he wrote in the file: “With respect to conversations with my brother Glenn, the discussions were most superficial and very guarded. He occasionally mentioned to me the names of persons who had been to see him or who had called him with respect to [this] investigation. Names of persons that I remember him telling me about included Vice President Agnew ... and George Bush.”

Now, there are a few amazing things here.

First, of course, is that a future U.S. President participated in what was likely a criminal scheme to obstruct justice.